Pippin
An internal AI documentation platform I took from a community side project to a resilient, enterprise-tier tool used by roughly 125K monthly active users.
125,000+ monthly active users
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Engineering Manager, Applied AI · Seattle, WA
Cathy KwokI build engineering teams and the AI tools they ship. Currently leading applied GenAI and developer tooling at Amazon.
About
AI-native leader with 12 years of experience and 8 years of direct people management, specializing in scaling hyperscale platforms (300M+ users) and applied AI solutions.
I work where technical architecture meets product strategy: leading teams through ambiguity while staying hands-on in the hardest problems.
What I care about most is building teams that genuinely collaborate, and using applied AI to solve real customer problems faster.
Selected work
What I’ve led, and what it took to scale it.
The story behind each one — what broke, what we built, and how it scaled.
The path here
How I got here.
Twelve years in tech, eight of them building and leading teams — read from the top down, most recent first.
Amazon · Seattle, WAApr 2025 – now
Software Development Manager, StoreGen (Applied GenAI & Developer Tools)
Built and scaled a 31-engineer applied GenAI organization across two teams — exploratory agentic developer tooling and the Pippin documentation platform.
- Personally owned hiring across two teams that grew from a combined 16 to 31 engineers: screened 200+ candidates, ran 50+ phone screens, and hired 15+ engineers, redesigning the interview loop into three stages with a collaborative work-sample exercise
- Own product vision and strategic roadmap across three GenAI tools, partnering with principal engineers and product leads to align infrastructure investment with the org's AI-native strategy
- Team ranked top in a ~2,000-engineer org on normalized deployments
2025 – now
Amazon · Seattle, WAAug 2022 – Apr 2025
Software Development Manager, IMDb
Led a 12-person website engineering team delivering consumer experiences to 300M+ monthly users on imdb.com.
- Directed a multi-year website modernization initiative driving 30%+ user growth through incremental, data-informed customer experience improvements
- Implemented multilingual URL architecture, improving international SEO performance and expanding global organic reach
- Led cross-team technical readiness across all 15 IMDb engineering teams for major film and TV award season launches — the platform's highest-traffic annual events
2022 – 2025
Affirm · Remote, USAug 2021 – Jul 2022
Engineering Manager, Identity Experience (Trust & Safety)
Built and led a 7-engineer cross-functional team delivering secure authentication and authorization workflows across Android, iOS, and Web.
- Delivered secure authentication and authorization workflows across Android, iOS, and Web for 10M+ international customers
- Partnered directly with trust, safety, compliance, and privacy functions to maintain zero-compromise secure access controls
2021 – 2022
Amazon · Seattle, WADec 2019 – Jun 2021
Software Development Manager, AWS Marketing Website Engineering
Led a 9-person frontend team maintaining aws.amazon.com and built an analytics library adopted across the company.
- Led a 9-person team building and maintaining frontend components on aws.amazon.com, serving 100M+ monthly visitors globally
- Developed authoring tools adopted by thousands of internal content creators, streamlining content publishing workflows
- Built an analytics and targeting integration library adopted by 100+ internal and external Amazon websites
2019 – 2021
Amazon · Seattle, WAMar 2018 – Nov 2019
Software Development Manager, Fresh Food Fast (F3) Grocery Fulfillment
Built and led a 6-person team developing fulfillment tools supporting the Amazon Fresh grocery launch across 7+ countries.
- Built and led a 6-person team developing inbound fulfillment tools for Prime Now and Amazon Fresh fulfillment centers
- Partnered cross-functionally on outbound pick tools for the Amazon Fresh grocery store launch across 7+ countries and 100+ fulfillment centers
2018 – 2019
Amazon · Seattle, WAAug 2016 – Mar 2018
Software Development Engineer, Prime Now Mobile
Led a cross-team project adding variable-weight item support to the Prime Now Android app.
- Led a cross-team project adding variable-weight item support to the Prime Now Android app (1M+ downloads)
- Developed Search and Browse features enhancing the customer shopping experience
2016 – 2018
Hiya Inc. · Seattle, WAApr 2016 – Jul 2016
Software Engineer
Android app development for Hiya, following the company's rebrand from Whitepages Caller ID.
- Continued Android development on the caller ID app through its transition from Whitepages Caller ID to Hiya
2016
Whitepages · Seattle, WAJun 2014 – Apr 2016
Software Engineer
Android app development for Whitepages Caller ID and Mr. Number.
- Built and maintained Android features across Whitepages Caller ID and Mr. Number
2014 – 2016
University of British Columbia · Vancouver, BCSep 2012 – Dec 2013
Undergraduate Teaching Assistant
Taught CPSC 101 / WMST 201 (Connecting with Computer Science) and APSC 160 (Introduction to Computation in Engineering Design).
2012 – 2013
Clinemetrica · Montreal, QCMay 2013 – Aug 2013
Software Developer / Intern
Cross-platform mobile and web development, including a cardiovascular age calculator built with PhoneGap.
- Converted an existing PHP web app into a PhoneGap mobile app implementing a cardiovascular age calculator, including AJAX-driven login and results retrieval
- Refactored modules of a PHP web application into an MVC structure and built front-to-back brute-force login protection
2013
Seamless Mobile Health · Vancouver, BCMar 2013 – May 2013
Contract Mobile Developer
Built a post-surgery symptom-tracking mobile app prototype, starting from a 3rd-place finish at HackingHealth Vancouver.
- Prototyped a post-surgery symptom-tracking app with a 3-person team (VitalClick) at HackingHealth Vancouver, placing 3rd
- Continued as a contract developer after the event, adding image upload and messaging features
2013
Plentyoffish.com · Vancouver, BCJan 2013 – Apr 2013
Co-op Software Engineer
Shipped features on the eVow Online Dating Android app alongside product, design, and QA, and drove down front-end reliability issues.
- Implemented new features on the eVow Online Dating Android app as part of a cross-functional team
- Investigated and fixed front-end reliability issues, and ran UI testing across other verticals and platforms
2013
UBC Pharmacy Practice Residency Program · Vancouver, BCJan 2012 – Mar 2013
Volunteer Web Programmer
Designed and built a hemodialysis drug reference website for hospital pharmacists at St. Paul's Hospital.
- Consulted with hospital pharmacist end-users and built a Joomla! template delivering a drug reference tool
2012 – 2013
UBC Centre for High-Throughput Biology · Vancouver, BCSep 2011 – Apr 2012
Bioinformatics Research Assistant
Curated gene-association literature for neurodevelopmental disorders and contributed to a neuroanatomical connectivity text-mining project.
2011 – 2012
↓ before all that ↓
University of British Columbia · Vancouver, BCGraduated 2014
B.S., Combined Computer Science and Biology
Combined major spanning computer science and biology.
2014
Toolkit
The toolkit used along the way.
Applied AI
- AWS Bedrock
- Anthropic Claude
- A2A orchestration
- Model Context Protocol
- RAG (Kendra, Bedrock Knowledge Bases)
- Claude Code
- Kiro CLI & Kiro Crew
Leadership
- Org building & scaling
- Hiring & interview design
- Coaching to promotion
- Executive stakeholder management
- Multi-product roadmap ownership
Engineering
- AWS
- Java
- TypeScript
- JavaScript
- Android
- React & React Native
- HTML/CSS
- Distributed consumer systems
Reliability & Evals
- Usability benchmarking
- AI-driven E2E regression
- Load testing
- On-call & incident response